AI and the Human Work of Hospitality
An important opportunity is to let AI take on more of the transactional work while people remain present to welcome guests and shape their physical experience of a place.
James Hague
5 min read
By James Hague | Peak Hospitality
Think about a good bellman or doorman waiting for a guest to arrive. There may be very little happening that could be recorded as a completed task. Then a car pulls up, someone steps out, and the welcome changes to fit the person. A guest who wants conversation receives it. Someone who is tired or preoccupied is given space. Help is offered before a small difficulty becomes an awkward moment.
The response can seem almost immediate. An experienced hospitality professional may have little sense of calculating each decision. They are watching, listening and responding, drawing on something they understand through the work itself. That kind of attention is central to the hospitality I want to help create.
It also gives me a particular interest in the discussion about artificial intelligence and consciousness. I have spent many years practising Buddhist meditation and Christian contemplative prayer. In periods of sustained stillness, there have been moments of understanding that arose without my consciously working towards them. Those experiences left me questioning my usual account of the self as a collection of thoughts and emotions, and wondering what awareness means when that activity grows quiet.
For hospitality businesses, these questions lead to practical decisions about the experience we want to offer. An important opportunity is to let AI take on more of the transactional work while people remain present to welcome guests and shape their physical experience of a place.
Pope Leo XIV's Magnifica Humanitas offers a useful challenge in paragraphs 113–114: intelligence alone is an incomplete measure of human life, and technology should support care and responsible judgment. [1] Anthropic's Chris Olah has also called for participation beyond computer science while leaving the significance of models' internal states unresolved. [2] We can contribute to that inquiry through the very practical question of how we care for people.
Before the guest arrives
There is an enormous amount I would like AI to help with before a guest ever reaches the door. Understanding what someone wants from a trip, working through reviews and matching them with the right hotel can be demanding. Preferences can be scattered across messages, and a straightforward arrangement can become a succession of small transactions.
A well-designed assistant could help a guest make sense of those choices and help a property respond with greater knowledge and consistency. That should include being candid when the hotel is a poor match. A booking is a weak measure of success if the guest arrives expecting something the property cannot provide.
I would want the quality of the digital response to be extraordinary: accurate, relevant, thoughtful and attentive to what the person may need next. Human review remains important in the approach I want to explore, both to check the facts and to leave room for an experienced colleague's spontaneous suggestion. The question is whether the combined work helps the guest feel well prepared and gives the team a clearer understanding of who is arriving.
A human welcome with less administration
I can imagine a hotel without a conventional administrative front desk, while still placing a human host at the centre of the arrival. Much of the transaction could be handled beforehand. On arrival, a concierge could welcome the guest, orient them and notice whether they need help, conversation or simply a little time to settle.
When I imagine arriving weary from a journey, the welcome I want is from a person. I want the team's attention available for that encounter. A robot analysing my face or posture is not the experience I have in mind.
There are other jobs where robotics could be genuinely helpful. Heavy luggage is an obvious example worth exploring. If a robot can move it safely and reliably, it could reduce physical strain while a host stays with the guest. The experience would still need thoughtful design, but there is no reason every use of automation has to remove the person from the encounter.
The distinction matters when we assess productivity. Someone available to welcome a guest may look idle until the guest arrives. That availability has a purpose. If automation saves time, I want to understand whether we have preserved more of it for attention, or simply filled it with another set of tasks.
Technology that helps a place feel right
The possibilities extend into the physical environment. Music could respond to the season, weather, time of day and the activity in a room. Lighting could support the pace of a morning or an evening. With a guest's permission, selected preferences could help shape parts of their stay.
I am interested in that kind of responsiveness. A property has a character, and technology could help its team carry that character through changing conditions. The aim would be an environment that feels considered and appropriate to the moment.
Those ideas should be transparent and easy to decline. A guest ought to understand which preferences they have shared and be able to change them. Useful environmental adjustments can begin with ordinary information, such as the weather or how busy a public space is, without making a guest's face or presumed emotions the subject of analysis. There should also be simple controls for the people who are actually in the room.
These are possibilities to test. The staff and guests would tell us a great deal about whether the result felt comfortable or intrusive, and whether the adjustment improved the experience at all.
Supporting attentive hosts
If we want more intuitive, emotionally attentive service, we also need to invest in the people offering it. Removing administration will not automatically give someone confidence, discretion or a better understanding of a guest. They need useful training, supportive colleagues and permission to respond thoughtfully when the usual answer does not quite fit.
My own experience makes me interested in voluntary practices such as yoga, meditation and contemplative reflection as ways of cultivating attention. I would want people to have room to explore approaches that suit them, alongside ordinary coaching and the experience of working with others. No one needs to share my spiritual life to be an excellent host.
We can then ask whether the operation supports what we value. Can a colleague stay with a difficult situation long enough to understand it? Can they act on a sensible observation? When a digital reply promises care, is someone equipped to carry it through?
For owners, these are commercial questions as well as human ones. Time saved matters, and so does what the guest receives in exchange. We should examine accuracy, resolution of requests and staff workload, then listen carefully to how guests describe the stay. Claims about loyalty or revenue need evidence from the actual operation.
The future I find interesting has fewer unnecessary transactions and more room for people to be present with one another. AI could do a great deal to help us create it, from finding the right hotel to preparing a room that fits the occasion. Human hosts would remain central to the welcome and the lived experience of the stay.
As the technology becomes more capable, can we become more deliberate about the care it makes possible? And will the guest at the door feel the difference?